[PennysMum]

I really think the benefits of chips outweigh the risks. I work at an animal hospital, and whenever a found stray is brought to us, we will scan them with a microchip reader. We've reunited many, many dogs and cats with their owners thanks to microchips-- including one cat who we found six months after he was lost two states away! The cat was a beautiful purebred Maine Coon, and the owner believed that he had been stolen rather than simply lost. Apparently the cat later escaped from the people who had taken him and was wandering as a stray for a while until he was found by a kind person and brought to our clinic to be checked over. His family had lost all hope of ever seeing him again, and without that chip we'd have had no way of ever tracing him all the way back to them. I'll never forget the joy in the voice of the owner when I called him to let him know we'd found his cat-- he was on the edge of tears, and he immediately left work and drove straight to us to pick the kitty up.

As scary as the idea of tumors may be, I find the idea of one of my furkids ending up lost and alone miles and miles away to be even more scary. I've been chipping all my pets since the day we found that cat's family thanks to his microchip, and I still really think that microchips are great.